One Strike to Ignite Hope
by ETNRL4L
Summary: "The falling rain was a relentless, foreboding omen. Each drop falling against her father's already soaked through hunting coat augured what seemed like an inevitable conclusion as it chilled her skin, clear through to her very bones... She was dying." Canon adaption of 'The Little Match Girl' by Hans Christian Anderson, written for the THG Fairytale Fic Challenge. Please R


**A/N: I have to thank salanderjade for giving me a swift kick where the sun don't shine to write this. There are so many others who can do this amazing story far better justice and fnur already **_**did**_**. But, I figured I'd still give it a crack.**

**Loosely based on The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson and ****written for the THG Fairytale Fic challenge at thgchallenges on tumblr.**

**Disclaimer: The Hunger Games and all the characters in this fic are the property of Suzanne Collins.**

**Enjoy!**

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The falling rain was a relentless, foreboding omen.

Each drop falling against her father's already soaked through hunting coat augured what seemed like an inevitable conclusion as it chilled her skin, clear through to her very bones.

She was dying.

No one had been willing to spare a coin for the threadbare baby clothes she'd been peddling in the public market. Why would they? The people there could afford better than her baby sister's raggedy old clothes. Of course, they'd turn their noses up an emaciated Seam girl and her rags.

She could not afford to give up, however. She could not return home to her sister, wasted away to nearly skin and bones with hunger. Regardless of her abandonment, she could not face her mother's absent stare while she withered out of existense.

She had to keep going. She had to keep moving. She had to keep trying.

When the sun began to set, indicating the market's closing time, her sister's clothes still in hand and her teeth clattering from the bitter cold- she forced her cramping legs to move. After three days of subsistence on nothing more than very weak mint tea, it wasn't a shock when the muscles in her arms began to spasm uncontrollably, their weakened state causing the bundle to plummet to the muddy ground at her feet.

She dared not kneel to reach for them on her shaking legs, fully aware of the very real likelihood she'd never again rise. It happened all the time, after all- people keeling over from hunger in the Seam. The pelting winter rain certainly seemed bent on forcing her to join their ranks that evening.

She couldn't afford the luxury the respite that freezing rain offered, though. She would not leave this wretched existence alone. She had Prim. She had her mother. She had to keep moving.

Blaming her nutrient deprived mind for its lack of focus, she found herself walking unsteadily through the back alley behind the Merchant homes, her treacherous thoughts drifting as the shifting draft sent the sedicious smells of cooking suppers her way every so often from windows, haphazardly left open.

As her mind veered, she was drawn into a distant memory- a cold night when she was small, maybe seven. She was in her father's arms, sitting on his lap at their table in their small kitchen. He'd caught a wild turkey and her mom had made an amazing gravy for it with wild mushroom and herbs from the forest. It sat before them steaming. She could feel the heat coming off the bird. She could hear her father's melodic laughter…

The sound of the butcher's dog whimpering from where the creature sat tied to a post, snapped her out of her trance and she shook her head furiously to center her thoughts. She knew her condition was worsening if her thoughts were drifting so easily. Delirium was one of the first signs she was nearing her end.

She forced the scattered thoughts within her aching head to align and it occurred to her to search through the Merchant's trash bins. Anything would do… a bone from the butcher… rotted lettuce from the grocer. They were starving. Anything would do.

Unfortunately, after checking the fifth bin, it became agonizingly transparent they'd all just been emptied. Still, she pressed on to the baker's. Whether driven by the madness of hollowness or drawn by that intoxicating smell of fresh bread the structure exhumed, she was far beyond caring.

Without her being aware, the combination of that scent and the heat radiating off that home, transported her back to another place, another time. She was with her father in that very shop and the smell of baked goods permeated everything. She could feel the warmth of her father's hand in hers as he smiled warmly down on her, a girl of only four. She returned a beaming gap-toothed smile of her own before her daddy turned back to speak to the nice man with the gold hair. She looked at all the pretty cakes that seemed to shine like lights through the glass…

She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing mesmerized in back of the baker's home with the family's trash lid in hand, when the menacing rain's icy fingers clawing at her back wrenched her attention to the now abruptly. She inwardly chastised herself for allowing the lapse once again, venturing a look down into the bin. Her heart sank upon noting its emptiness.

Then, all at once, the baker's wife appeared before her… shrieking, condemning, threatening. She was worse than the rain. The rain, at least, had been mercifully subtle with its hints at her looming for her death. The banshee before her all but wished it upon her.

She replaced the lid and hobbled away, near the pen where they kept their pig and finally succumbed to the rain's lure, collapsing at the base of an old apple tree.

There, she gave up hope. She had nothing to take home. Her mother would soon be gone. They would take her sister. She was too tired, too hungry, too weak.

She was dying.

Defeated, she allowed her mind to drift of its own accord, no longer willing to fight whatever fevered delusions death wished to bestow. She saw her father. She was only a toddler, barely learning to walk. She'd been crawling, but she could see him clearly from her vantage point on the floor by the hearth as he entered the house, smiling. Always smiling. Her father had a smile that could light up forever. He held something in his arms that she instinctually knew was good, meant happy things, and she craned to see what it was more clearly. She held her hands up to him as he neared her and what he held in his arms became crystalyne to her large steel eyes… two loaves of bread…

Her father's form blurred to be replaced by a smaller figure. Katniss squinted her eyes in the strengthening downpour, not sure if this was another part of her waking dream.

No.

She knew this boy. She'd just seen him standing behind his mother as she'd yelled those awful things at her. He was in her year at school.

What happened next was out of a dream, however. The boy cut off burnt pieces of two loaves of bread he held in his arms (had she dreamed that or was that real?), then threw them into the rain without sparing a look at her.

They landed right at her feet.

By the time she looked up, the boy had disappeared back into the bakery. She mustered all the strength her pathetic body had in its depleted reserves, launching herself for the bread. She tucked it in her father's jacket and made her way home as quickly as she could.

She kept her sister alive. Her mother was not gone.

When she saw the golden-haired boy in school the next day, she noted the bruise on his face and felt ashamed at the realization she'd likely been the cause. Could he have burned that bread just to give her a chance at life?

Was there still a hope of that much kindness in a world so cruel as to take her father and leave her family to starve?

As she turned away from the boy and cast her eyes to the ground, she noted a single dandelion - the first of the Spring - sprouting at her feet. Long buried memories returned to her and she realized what she needed to do to subsist- for her family to endure.

So, that hopeless, conquered girl whose threadbare baby clothes no one wanted, died at the base of that apple tree in that freezing rain…

Because the boy with the bread taught Katniss Everdeen how to survive.

_FIN_

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**A/N: This was one of the hardest things I've ever written. If you liked it.**

**Please Review!**


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